Become an eMuseum Participant!

Gallery Systems welcomes any cultural heritage collection that would like to join the eMuseum project. Participation is free. We hope to include as many different institutions as possible so that eMuseum can be a valuable tool to help people find art content spread across the Internet.

To begin the process, please send an introductory email to emuseumNetwork@gallerysystems.com. The message should include information such as the following: description of the collection, number of records to share, type of database where information is catalogued, URL where the collection is published, and primary contact information.

You will receive a copy of the eMuseum Participation Agreement. The agreement confirms that you wish to participate, but may choose to stop participating at any time for any reason. Once the signed agreement is received, our technical staff will meet with your technical staff to schedule installation. Please see the detailed "Overview of Basic eMuseum Installation/Configuration Steps" below.

Basically, Gallery Systems will work with you to create the desired selection of records for sharing. We will also review the data fields in your database and map it to the fields used by eMuseum site. The data that is shared will be loaded into a separate database with only the records and fields needed by eMuseum; an automatic update script can be configured to refresh this data on a regular basis.

Note: Some source database types may require additional configuration to connect. We will be happy to work on this as time and resources allow.

The URL for your local data set will be registered on the Gallery Systems central server. Once this is established, key data fields will be saved to the central server to allow for optimized searching. A reference thumbnail image for the image (if available) will also be saved to the central server. You will be able to review your data on a test server and request changes to the mapping, as needed. You will also be able to participate in a process to map Classification and Geographic source data to a standardized list of terms which all collections are being matched. The content will only be made available on the main server after you approve that it is ready.

Once your data is on the main site, your objects will display along with the search results of other institutions. Users will be able to view basic data about your objects, including links to large images and even the record on your own collections site. Your records will be available for creating cross-institutional groupings called My Collections - great for preliminary planning of exhibitions or classroom lectures.

Thank you for your interest and we would look forward to working with you! The more participants there are, the more useful eMuseum becomes.

Overview of Basic eMuseum Installation/Configuration Steps

Define any special publication criteria for Objects, Artists/Makers, and Media (Images). The default for TMS clients is the Public Access check-box, but other publication criteria can be configured within the export script. For users on other systems, it is best to work with your project contact to establish these rules.

Determine appropriate addresses for images and object links on institution site. For example, if you have an existing site running eMuseum you can establish a URL to access the digital images served via eMuseum. This saves setting up a separate site to serve the images. If you do not currently have a dynamically generated site for your collection, you can create a simple site to serve these images. Your project implementation specialist can assist you with this step.

If you are using TMS, you will need to modify the import script to change "CollectionsDatabase" to the name of the TMS database throughout. Changes to this file should be saved. For non-TMS users, you will need to work with your project contact to determine the best export option.

Download the eMuseum Network software from the Gallery Systems FTP site

Download jTDS Driver version 0.9 from the jTDS site

Download Tomcat 6 from the Apache Tomcat site

Install Tomcat 6. On Windows, this is a simple click trough installer and installation can be completed in about 5 minutes. On Linux, it is slightly more involved, but if you are using Fedora or similar distribution that has a package deployment tool such as YUM, it can be very fast.

Once Tomcat is installed, place the downloaded jtds-0.9.jar file in the Tomcat6 "lib" folder.

Create a "shell" database called "eMuseumNetwork" on the database server which has access to your collections database. A linked server setup would work.

Create a database user account with DB ownership privileges on the "eMuseumNetwork" database.

Run the import script (standard or modified) against the "eMuseumNetwork" database to create the eMuseum Network data structure and populate the database with your collection data.

Make sure your firewall is open on port 8080 and that you can browse to http://localhost:8080/<your node name>/services/dsnode?wsdl (e.g., http://localhost:8080/getty/services/dsnode?wsdl). If you see XML data in your browser, then this indicates that the node was deployed successfully.

Send the public URL or IP address of the machine where you installed eMuseum Network to your Gallery Systems contact along with your node name

Gallery Systems will register your node for testing and get back to you with any additional steps - usually very minimal.